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Middle School Game Design 1b: Creating a Game

Building upon the prior prerequisite course, students will further advance their knowledge of game design by taking this course. Delving into the development process, students will create details and add component pieces in a game while learning to prototype, troubleshoot, and test. Additionally, exploring how to critique a game and advertise it will strengthen the student’s ability to create a fully functioning game from start to finish.

Course Overview

Units at a glance

You built your game design skills and Scratch techniques in the first part of this course. By the end, you wrote your game design document. Now you are ready to start developing that game! First, let’s give your game some movement controls, a start level, a way to keep track of lives, and a game over backdrop.

Good to see that you’ve come back to finish what you started! To make your game even more fun to play, we are going to ramp up the difficulty by adding more levels and creating an enemy sprite that’s out to destroy the player character. If the player can make it all the way through your levels, they will get to see the winning screen you create. But the fun doesn’t stop there! After your basic game is working, it’s time to brainstorm ways you can make it even better.

Once a game has reached the Minimum Viable Product stage it can be played, but it also has plenty of ways it can be enhanced! You can implement all kinds of improvements to make the game more immersive, realistic, aesthetically pleasing, and sticky. There are so many things you can do, it might be hard to decide just what you want to do. There are some techniques that will help you get focused on making some goals for your game improvements. And once you decide what you want to do, you get to head for the fun part—doing it! Afterwards, you’ll make sure your program is bug-free by applying some troubleshooting steps.

The game design process is not finished once your game is developed. The fun continues through the post-production phase with testing and critiquing your game. It’s important to remove all the pesky bugs that you can. We want the finished game to run smoothly and fulfill all the requirements. So, get ready to refine your game, add finishing touches, and then advertise it so that people want to play it. You’re almost ready to cross the finish line!